Chapter X: Part 10

“Thank you, dear, for telling me all you have done,” said Maida. And then after a little pause: “Do you think you will never marry, Philippa? Has it left that feeling?”

“No, not exactly,” said the girl, frankly. “You see, after all, it was _not_ him I cared for; it was something I believed, or thought I believed him to be. I don’t _think_ I shall ever marry, however. I suppose, though it sounds rather conceited to say so, that it would be difficult for me ever to feel quite sure I was not making a mistake.”

She looked down at Miss Lermont as she spoke—Maida was by this time indoors and on her couch again—with a half-questioning look in her eyes.

“Don’t exaggerate that idea,” her friend replied, rather abruptly. “After all, every woman is in the same case? And remember you have not seen many men; your life has been to some extent isolated. Don’t begin to think there are hardly any happy marriages. It is a trick of the day to talk so.”

Philippa’s face grew rather red.

“Don’t snub me so severely,” she said. “Put a little of my hesitation down to humility.”

Miss Lermont laughed.

“Ah, well,” she said. “If the time ever comes when your hesitation vanishes, promise to let me know at once.”

Philippa was to leave Dorriford the next day. That morning brought her a letter from her brother Charley.

“I am only writing,” he said, “to make sure of your keeping to your train. I am going up to town for a night, and will meet you at the junction to-morrow on my way home again. And, by-the-by, I am half thinking of asking a friend to stay two or three days with us. I had not time to tell you about him before you left home,”—for Charley Raynsworth had only returned from the East a day or two before Philippa’s visit to the Lermonts—“we had so much to talk about. He is a civil engineer whom I saw a good deal of in India, and he came home a few weeks ago for good. His name is Gresham—he says he met you at Merle once. Do you remember him? I am sure my father and all of you will like him.”

Philippa’s breath came quick and short for a moment on reading these words.

“How strange,” she thought, “that Charley and he should have been thrown together! ‘Met me at Merle’—yes, indeed—_that day_! Once I see him I daresay it will seem all right. But just at present I feel almost more self-conscious about our last meeting than about the time at Wyverston. I wonder,” she added to herself, “if dear Solomon has been in India too!”

There was still a little flush of excitement on her face when she ran up-stairs to say good-bye to her cousin Maida, whose slowly increasing weakness was steadily but surely diminishing the hours which she was each day able to spend down-stairs.

“How well you are looking this morning, dear! Are you so delighted to go home, and not the least bit sorry to leave us?” she said, with half-playful reproach.

“Of _course_ I am sorry to leave you, dear, dear Maida,” said Philippa, tenderly. “I am feeling very pleased though, this morning, for I have just heard that Charley will meet me at the junction, and I don’t think I had fully realised how nice it is to have him back again,” she added in explanation, which was strictly true so far as it went. And indeed in her anticipation of meeting Michael Gresham again, she could scarcely have described her sensations as pleasurable or the reverse.

A few words from Philippa announcing her safe arrival at home, and ending with affectionate expressions of gratitude to her kind cousins, reached Dorriford the following day.

Then came a blank extending over a fortnight, by the end of which time Miss Lermont began to fear that something must be the matter at Greenleaves.

She was on the point of writing again to Philippa to inquire the cause of her silence, when a letter arrived. It was a long letter and marked “private,” though no restrictions were placed on Maida as to making known to her family the news it contained.

“My hesitation has vanished,” were the words with which Philippa preluded the announcement of her engagement to Michael Gresham. “I am _perfectly_ happy, _perfectly_ satisfied, though it has been difficult for me to believe myself worthy of him. But as _he_ thinks I am—”

More practical details followed. It was not a “brilliant” marriage, such as Evelyn Headfort had dreamt of for her sister. A life of some restrictions, even possibly of a certain amount of struggle, was before her and Michael, but a life brightened and ennobled by high aims and many worthy interests outside themselves, by, above all, completest confidence and mutual sympathy.

“It seems almost ideal,” thought Maida, as she finished the letter. “I can feel no fears or apprehensions about a marriage like that, whatever the world may say as to the necessity of wealth.”

For Maida’s eyes were growing very clear as to the real estimate of things—she was nearing the heights where earth-born clouds and mists begin to melt away in the everlasting sunshine.

Up to the present time, Bernard Gresham is still unmarried, not having as yet succeeded in discovering the flawless gem among women, to whom he could without misgiving entrust his happiness, and who alone would be fitted to shine as mistress of Merle. He now by no means regrets Philippa’s little looked-for refusal of the honour he laid before her, vainly as he has endeavoured satisfactorily to account to himself for it. But as his cousin’s wife he quite approves of her, and he is always ready cordially to welcome her and her husband when they can spare a week or two for a visit to Merle, on which occasions it is unnecessary to say that “Solomon” again figures as one of Philippa’s fellow-travellers.

The End.